The Dream Where the Losers Go

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Winnipeg,
Manitoba.

Incarcerated for five months at an adolescent treatment centre, Skey
Mitchell is “pulled out of the Real World into the inside of her head
where nothing fit together and very little made sense.” In this dream
world, the tunnels of darkness “without name, without face, without
expectations” are a “place for safety and forgetting,” while the
“tunnel of light” is a place ”without mercy, without beginning or
end.” In the tunnels, she encounters a boy who is possibly more
damaged than she.

As a day student, Skey re-enters her old school hoping to find her lost
self, “not the pale, quiet, nothing-to-say, not-worth-noticing …
locked-up head case” loser she is at the centre. However, as Skey
reconnects with the Dragon gang and resumes her relationship with their
leader and her lover, Jigger, her compulsion to withdraw increases.
Unresolved issues that provoked her self-mutilation remain elusively
beyond her conscious recall. The slick, self-absorbed members of the
Dragons compare unfavorably with the generosity of her assigned tutor,
Tammy, and the appeal of Lick, a student in her English class who
materializes as the boy in the dream world. Unfortunately, working on a
project with Skey earns Lick the Dragon’s enmity and a beating severe
enough to require hospitalization. On his release, Lick disengages
completely from the real world.

As Skey suffers the pressure of the “dragon’s claw” in the
institutional and school worlds, she beams in and out of the dream
world. Finally, Jigger’s attempts to coerce her into a Dragon’s
“Night Games” trigger her memory of the events leading to her
suicidal behavior and permit catharsis. She understands that the
“tunnels had been ways to escape, ways to forget what was too
difficult to know,” as well as “dimensions of searching for what had
been lost.” Having resolved her own issues, Skey is determined to help
Lick out of his tunnels back to wholeness.

The gentle dream motif stands in stark contrast to the “problem
novel” themes: gangs, peer pressure, gang rape, dysfunctional
families, sexual abuse, loneliness and isolation, drugs, and suicide.
Goobie’s prose flows smoothly and is emotionally gripping; the
dialogue is realistic and appropriate. Although the secondary characters
are “types,” Skey emerges as a believable, emotionally damaged,
struggling young woman with an inner strength that facilitates her
recovery and saves her from being a “loser.” The mature themes of
the novel and the graphic detail limit readership to older readers.
Recommended.